Netflix will continue to show you what you love

GQ catches up with Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s global head of content, ahead of the release of Sacred Games

Ted Sarandos is surprised when I start to gush about Nanette, Hannah Gadsby’s stand-up special that released on Netflix a few days ago, almost as soon as I enter the room. “You’re like the fifth person to tell me this – and that’s just today,” he exclaims; and then, almost as a mental note, “it seems to have done really well here.”

For Netflix’s chief content officer, whose job involves seeing to it that their annual budget ($8 billion for this year) gets allocated in the right projects, this isn’t merely news of another piece of content getting good reviews. Quality content (well, for the most part) is what has kept the OTT streaming platform in a position of global dominance, spreading its reach in over 190 countries, and staying on top of award nominations and subscriber numbers in an increasingly competitive space.

For Sarandos, ‘here’ might be the operative word. It is perhaps marginally more noteworthy that a Tasmanian comedian – who only the truly dedicated fans of the form or industry insiders must’ve known of, before her 50-minute set arrived to decimate all pre-conceived notions of what a stand-up special can be about – found appreciation, and largely word-of-mouth success, all the way over here in India.

It’s this sort of across-the-globe appeal that Sarandos is hoping for Netflix’s first India original series. He’s in Mumbai on this rainy June evening to attend the premiere of Sacred Games, the much talked-about adaptation of Vikram Chandra’s 928-page novel by Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane, starring a stellar ensemble cast, including Saif Ali Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Radhika Apte.

As Mumbai tilts dangerously on the posters behind him, Sarandos talks enthusiastically of Netflix’s plans for India. Already, they have seven original series in “various states of production”, in collaboration with the country’s A-list of production houses. And a lot of them happen to be book adaptations: Joining a slew of previously announced titles (Prayaag Akbar’s Leila, Arvind Adiga’s SelectionDay, Bilal Siddiqi’s Bard of Blood) is Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.

“I think that the only thing that has prevented Indian programming from travelling around the world has been distribution,” says Sarandos. “Sacred Games is our first crack at an India original, and it’s a classic Bombay story. It’s so authentic, people are going to love it.”

What put Vikram Chandra’s magnum opus on your radar?

Erik Barmack, who runs our International Originals program, was tracking it for a long time. It had a development deal in the US with AMC and they were going to adapt it as a US-centred story and it never happened. So, when it fell out of their deal, we jumped on it. Phantom were attached to parts of it early on and we had been working with them on other projects too. It’s like a cinema-level production with real movie stars. It’s a classic Bombay story, and we knew it had to be located here, in India. You can’t fake that. And you don’t want a ‘lite’ version of that.

Did the fact that the book didn’t do well commercially, when it came out, figure in the decision making process at all?

It had a long life. It was literary fiction. And people still talk about it. It’s what we were most excited about: The culture. We wanted to make something that we knew that the population had embraced.

What’s the process for deciding what books/scripts from around the world get adapted for the screen?

I’ve got teams all over the world that are empowered to make those choices and they’re making them based on the same thing: How can we bring this great story to life? There’s no shortage of ideas, but it’s a very rare gift to be able to have a real vision for a story and execute it. So, basically their job is vetting the projects and storytellers, and then supporting them and creating the environment where they’ll do the best work of their lives.

I read that Netflix plans to release 1,000 titles this year.

You know, that sounds like a big number, but the truth of it is that it’s not. It wouldn’t matter if the shows weren’t relevant. It just happens to be that, if you add them all up, that’s what it comes up to. But I’m always amazed with my team’s ability to scale. To do original films, original series, scripted and unscripted, documentary, documentary series, stand-up comedy, kids programming: all things that one network usually doesn’t do across the board. People’s tastes are so diverse. We have a 125 million people around the world watching, so that demands a lot of programming, to find something that people are going to love.

What’s a film or a series that’s done surprisingly well in India?

Stranger Things, 13 Reasons Why and Narcos are watched just as much as they are in the US. These are not shows people would say right away are perfect for India; but it’s a reminder that people all over the world love great stories and great storytelling. 13 Reasons Why is a particular one, where what felt like a very contemporary American story turned out to be a very human story. And that’s why they travel so well.

Did you anticipate that Wild Wild Country would be the sort of wildfire that it became?

No, Wild Wild Country did much better in India than I expected. Obviously, there was a connection but there’s a lot of things [about the show], that are a bit more causal than the Indian connection, that don’t ‘work’. But people really loved that story. The thing that amazed me about it was that all of it literally went down in front of everybody. So much of that footage had aired on television already, and people barely remember that it happened.

What was the mandate given to you when you joined Netflix two decades ago?

I met Reed [Hastings], the founder of Netflix, in 1999. And he described Netflix almost exactly like it is, right now, in 1999. It sounded like crazy talk to me at the time, because the internet was very slow, and well, you couldn’t watch movies on the internet – meaningfully. And yet he had the vision that the internet would become faster and inexpensive and that it would become an affordable thing, and that all filmed entertainment is going to come into homes via the Internet. That was such a mind-blowing idea. And, we talked about what the possibilities would be if we were… early to that. One of those ideas was original programming, but it was always an out-there thing: When we get big enough, we could have our own platform.

So the mandate was: Can we create a platform using the personalisation aspects of the Internet? And the distribution efficiencies of the internet to make better programmes than everybody else.

What was key to ensuring you succeeded at this?

Before we made our first original program, we had 25 million people streaming on Netflix. So, to me, being disciplined enough not to jump into it too soon was important. If it didn’t work for most people, they would be aggravated by it; and you’d have paid for all the rights that you couldn’t use. And if you get in too late, everyone would beat you to it. What we had was the cost of mailing DVDs going up, and the cost of streaming going down. As soon as these trajectories crossed, we jumped in.

Your first original – House of Cards – ends this year.

Yeah, it was the first deal; though the first show to premiere was Lilyhammer. But it was actually being produced by somebody else, so House of Cards was our first commissioned original. I happened to attend a filming of the last episode a few weeks ago; and they’d saved the very last scene of the very last episode to shoot at the very end. It’s really amazing, when I think about what’s happened in the seven years since I was in Baltimore for the first episode shoot: How the show, and even television, has changed. It got very emotional.

Where do you see Netflix in the next five years?

Every time I would have projected the future in five years, I would be wrong. So I worry sometimes that even though we have big plans, maybe I am not thinking big enough all the time. But in general, I think more original programming in more countries around the world. So the idea that the next Stranger Things could come from India is a really exciting proposition.

Where do you see the most exciting content emerging from in the world?

It’s really hard to place that, because I don’t usually get to work with all the great filmmakers we have in different countries. We’re just ramping up original content in South Korea and generally all over Europe and Asia. Two years ago, I wouldn’t have thought of Spain in this respect, but with ground-breaking shows like Club de Cuervos and Las Chicas Del Cable, it’s looking really good.

How do you respond to people who say there’s just too much content out there?

I say it’s not all for you. I mean right now it’s really difficult to get people to agree on something, let alone two countries. Sure, we are putting out a lot of programming, but the real beauty of what happens on Netflix is to be able to personalize to each individual; to each one of the 300 million watchers of Netflix in the world. Each of them have a different experience and interpretation of the things that they see. The things that are being recommended to me are not the same as what’s being recommended to you. So it is very exciting when people say there is too much content in a world where there used to be a handful of networks and two hours of primetime. Now you can watch anything, anywhere, anytime and really it’s a matter of what you love.